Why is an AI agent slow, according to Gaurav Sen's AI interview #9?

In Gaurav Sen's mock interview, candidate Tanishk traces a slow performance-review agent mainly to how its tools are called. The agent uses about five tools, and when they run synchronously each one waits for the previous response before the next starts. Extra tools pulled in from an MCP server, and tools that fetch data which could have been cached, add further delay and bloat the model's context.

• The agent in the scenario is a single agent calling a hosted LLM through an API, with no separate memory layer.
• Its tools cover employee data and git commits, exposed over MCP.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Gaurav Sen (2026-10-16). Read the whole episode summary →

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